The T and I in LGBTQIA+
Knowledge and Power
Last month I had an experience with a slick transphobe that imprinted on me. It made me think deeply about my trans brothers and sisters, their courage, and the constant attacks they endure.
I shared it in a story called Cover Charge: Kindness. Typically when I write about an unpleasant experience it releases the feelings from my heart and head allowing me to move past them.
This has not been the case in this instance. I know it’s because there is so much open hostility and too many unjustified attacks on the trans community.
The GOP presidential campaign created and ran anti-trans advertisements. That alone is enough but it seems every time I tune in to any media there is an inflammatory story about trans athletes or nonsense about public school gender reassignment surgeries.
I’ve realized there are not nearly enough stories about the transgender experience from the transgender community. Today, I want to change that by sharing a Bursting Through story called The T and I in LGBTQIA+ from the powerful and passionate Dani.
This story first appeared in the Q2 2022 Bursting Through Connections digital magazine. Dani’s compelling story and influential voice deserve to be heard again.
Dani is a transgender Las Vegas resident who likes to spend her time helping others. Her values are love, compassion and respect and her goal is to bring awareness and education to her community and beyond.
Dani is retired from the military. When she first retired, she was going through a lot of emotional and mental struggles trying to figure out where she really fit in.
She has always had a lot of feminine mannerisms and traits but had to cover them up in the very hyper masculine world of the military. She admits to not always being successful.
After the military, she spent a lot of time looking inward without self judgment to evaluate what was going on. Dani found her truth and came out as transgender to God and Country. This declaration was not met with much surprise to those who knew her best.
During this time, she identified as a transgender women to be able to fit into the transgender community and norms. She explained, The transgender umbrella is a very big umbrella, but if you are not a transgender woman you are almost made to feel ‘less than’. If you identify somewhere else like non-binary, society and/or transgender women may look at you differently. Everyone wants to put you in a box.
Dani wants people to look at gender not as a box but as phases, One thing that happens in the transgender realm is there are different phases. One day you are a crossdresser, the next day you might identify as a transgender women. You are always evolving. I think that is why they call it transitionING and not transitionED.
The Queer Community is made up of all non-heterosexual people represented by an ever expanding alphabet: LGBTQIA+. Each of these letters represents members of the community, but they are not all the same experience or all about sexual orientation. Dani wants people, both straight and queer, to be educated about T and I.
Transgender and Intersex are different than every other letter in the queer alphabet, she explained. Transgender and Intersex are NOT associated with sexual orientation but rather associated with gender identity and expression.
Dani feels this is really important for people to understand because this is where many people both inside and outside of the Queer community have problems understanding and where fear and hate arrive.
When asked to define the difference between sexual orientation and gender expression, without hesitation Dani responded, I have a really good friend in her PhD program for educational psychology and we actually have this conversation quite often. You can look at identity as a big bubble and within the big bubble there are little tiny bubbles that kind of overlap which are gender identity, gender expression and sexual orientation.
They all encompass your larger identity, but gender identity, gender expression and sexual orientation have been scientifically proven to be on a scale. This is even why some cisgender men and women are slightly more masculine or feminine than the established norm because sexuality and gender are all part of a spectrum and in our DNA.
Dani is very visible in Las Vegas, especially downtown. She has amazing energy and an unstoppable positive spirit. She is often found dancing at local clubs, both straight and queer or just checking out the social happenings. She is a self proclaimed Dancing Queen who always has her selfie stick and posts a lot of great pictures to social media.
She is very warm and has an amazing connection to people that allows her to take a personal approach to engaging with and educating the public. This is not common in the queer or trans community and Dani understands her superpower and uses it for good.
Spending so much time one-on-one with people has revealed the biggest misconception about transgender and gender fluid people to Dani, That transgender is a mental illness. That there must be something mentally wrong with a transgender person. She went on to say, It’s NOT the case. It’s scientifically proven to be on a scale. That is why everyone does not express themselves the same way or identify the same way. We all fall somewhere on that scale and this is why some hetorosexual women are more masculine and some heterosexual men are more feminine.
Dani is a person of great intelligence and an amazing heart. She lives her values of love, compassion and respect flawlessly. Here are three things she wants everyone to understand:
Transgender is NOT a mental illness.
Transgender people are not all the same.
We are not a fetish.
Thank you Dani for sharing your knowledge and giving us a better understanding of our Transexual and Intersexual friends and loved ones.
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